Daily Info - Your Guide to Oxford, UK: FAQs

These listings do not necessarily appear in the printed sheet and appear on the website only for the day on which they occur. If you would like to give your event more prominence or publicity in advance, you can place a paid ad on our Coming Soon advert page and we will make it appear at the top right of all relevant Events pages. More details here.

This includes more or less everything else on this site. Some kinds of listings are free. I'm afraid you'll have to phone us up or email us to add or change any details though!

This is a system of web-only advertising, begun in January 2008. You need a Daily Info account to place and manage your listing, but it should be very effective for selling property in Oxford! You can sell your house via Daily Info for one payment of £58.75, including VAT. The listing stays online until it's sold, at no extra charge. Find out more here.

We offer three types of advertising on our Advert pages. Paid ads can also appear on any relevant Events pages. For more detailed information on how to advertise on our Events pages, have a look here. Click here for our current price list.

1. Free line ads. Non-trade ads are free if they are 10 words long or less, and will appear on the website only, in the free section. They will last for one week, and the most recent ones appear at the top. The first 3 words will automatically appear in bold and caps. Live links are not included, but on most pages you can upload a picture. Ads with more than 10 words must be paid for. More info on word counting...

2. Paid line ads. These appear in the printed sheet and in larger type on the website. On most pages you can also upload 2 pictures. There is no word limit, and the first few important words are in bold and caps. Unless you pre-book more than one issue (see info on discounts) your ad will appear in one sheet (printed 3 times a week in term time and weekly in the University vacation) and will last for one week online. The most recent ads appear at the top.

Paid line ads cost 50p/word/issue (we charge per issue of the printed sheet - see Issue Dates and Deadlines for more information). Live links are included. If your ad is for an event, it will also appear in the relevant events section and on our What's On Today page. More info on Event Advertising...

DAILY INFO MAPS, "Oxford by Day and Night". Includes late opening times and views on 3 scales. £20/100. Email map@dailyinfo.co.uk for free sample.

3. Display box ads. These appear in the printed sheet (in black and white) and at the top of the page on the website (in colour). If your ad is for an event, your box will also appear in the relevant events section and on our What's On Today page. You will also get a link from the revolving advertising space on our homepage directly to your ad. Unless you pre-book more than one issue (see info on discounts) your ad will appear in one sheet (printed 3 times a week in term time and weekly in the University vacation) and will last for one week online. Box ads, unlike line ads, appear in a random order each time a user loads the page.

We can design your ad to your specifications, including your logo, other images or particular fonts, etc. There is no extra charge for this service. Alternatively, you can email us your own design (high-quality jpg please, or pdf. We can also accept hard copy by post). We'll need a black-and-white (or at least high-contrast) version for the printed sheet as well as a colour version for the website. If you're going to design the ad yourself, it's a good idea to contact us to talk about our print and web specifications and sizes first.

As of May 2008, we've introduced variable rates for box ads. Click here for our price list. Our column width is 6.8cm in print, and we charge either £10, £11 or £12 per column centimetre in height, per issue. The minimum size is 1 column width (6.8cm) x 3cm height (£35.25 including VAT). Online, the width of a single column ad is 340 px, and the height translates as 50 px to a centimetre, so a 3cm ad is 340 px by 150 px; a 4cm ad is 340 px by 200 px etc. You can also book a double column ad. That's 14cm across in print and 700 px online. Whatever size of ad you choose, the proportions of the ad stay the same in print and online.

A live link to your website or email address is included. As a rough guide, you can get about 30 words in our smallest box, although of course, the fewer words, the more impact your ad will have (see Effective Advertising).

4. "Houses and Flats for Sale" ads. These appear on the web only. Each property has its own page, which includes 9 pictures and a full description. The page will stay up until the property is sold for a single payment of £50 plus VAT. To start listing your house click here. To view properties for sale click here.

Examples of what we count as one word:
• 01865 241133
• 07855 123456
• miranda@dailyinfo.co.uk
• Email Me
• off-street
• non-smoking
• VGC

Examples of what we count as more than one word:
• 1 bed flat (3 words)
• short let (2 words)
• cleaning & ironing (3 words)
• near BMW (2 words)
• near city centre (3 words)
• Ford escort (2 words)
• good condition (2 words)
• incl. bills (2 words)

We charge for adverts per issue of the printed sheet. It will also appear on the website for each week it is in the printed sheet. In University termtime, we print three times a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. In the vacation, we print weekly, on Fridays.

The deadline is always 10am the day before you want your ad to appear. The sheet is then produced and sent out the same day. So, for example, in term time you could submit your ad at 9.30 on Monday morning, and it would be displayed around Oxford on the Daily Info sheet before Tuesday morning. There is, of course, no deadline for the website, and your ad will appear online as soon as we've processed it, which will usually be within a couple of hours of submission (see our opening hours)

Discounts depend on the number of issues you book. If you book a run of between 4 and 10 issues of the same ad, you get a 10% discount. If you book 11 issues, you get 11% off, if you book 12 issues, you get 12% off, and so on, all the way up to our maximum discount of 40% off for a run of 40 issues.
If you are a registered charity, we won't charge you VAT.

With the exception of the Houses and Flats for Sale page, all ads last for one week online and one issue in print. If you have a paid line or a box ad, you'll also appear in print. In term time, the ad will last for two or three days in print, and in the University vacation it'll last for a week - see Issue Dates & Deadlines.

If you have a paid line ad or a box ad, you can book longer than a week at a time - see Issue Dates & Deadlines and Advert Types for more info.

If you have a box ad publicising an event, it will appear on the relevant event page(s), within the listings for the appropriate day, as soon as you've confirmed your booking. This is in addition to the time you pay for, when it appears at the top right of all relevant events pages, and on the Coming page, and in print.

If you have a box ad publicising an event, it will appear on the relevant event page(s), within the listings for the appropriate day, standing out prominently among the free listings, AND will appear on the right hand side of all relevant event page(s), throughout its run. This will be in addition to appearing on the Coming advert page.

If you have a paid line ad publicising an event, it will appear on the right hand side of all relevant event page(s), throughout its run. This, again, will be in addition to appearing on the Coming advert page.

If you have a paid advert, line or box, which is not directly publicising an event, but which is relevant to the subject of one or more event pages, it will appear in the column to the right of the listings on those pages, throughout its run. Examples: a Theatrical Needs ad can appear on the Theatre page, a "Tennis Racket for sale" ad can appear on the Sports and Fitness classes page. This will be in addition to appearing on the advert page on which it is submitted.

In each case appearing on an events page is included in the cost of the ad as described above. What is considered relevant to an events page is at Daily Info staff discretion. More info on Event Advertising...

You can place your ad via the website - this is the best and quickest method for a free or paid line ad, and also works perfectly well for box ads. You can do this from the bottom of the page you want your ad to appear on, or just click here and follow the instructions. Houses and Flats for Sale works a bit differently (as of Jan 2008) - more info on that here.

For first-time advertisers and private individuals, we prefer to take payment in advance by credit or debit card - you can send us your details through our secure server when you place your ad via the website, or call us on 01865 241133. DON'T SEND US (OR ANYONE) YOUR CARD DETAILS BY EMAIL. You can also pay by cheque (to "Daily Information Ltd"), or drop in to our offices and pay in cash.

You can also send us the copy for your ad by email, or, if you're not sure what you want to say, give us a call on 01865 241133 and we will do our best to advise you. If you are placing a box ad, we will email you a proof for your approval before publication.

Yes, you can attach a picture to free line ads, paid line ads and box ads (see Advert Types and Prices, above). You can do this on most (but not all) ad pages. Usually you can have one picture with a free line ad, two with a paid line ad and three with a box. On the Houses and Flats For Sale page you can have nine.

The best way to get your picture online is to upload it when you place your ad. You do this bit on the last page, after you've done everything else. It will need to be a .jpg or a .gif file, and less than 200 KB (you may need to resize the picture on your computer using a program like ImageReady or Photoshop before you start placing your ad).

Your picture will need to be the right way up and large enough to see BEFORE you upload it - you can't edit it afterwards!

Pictures are checked by Daily Info staff before they appear online, so, while the text of your ad will appear immediately, there will be a short delay before the link to the picture appears.

We may delete the picture if we think it's unsuitable. Pictures should be exclusively concerned with the item in the ad and must not include extra text. Nor do we allow composite images (if you'd like more than one picture, you'll need a paid ad). The decision of the Daily Info editorial team on the suitability of images is final.

"Email me" is a link that appears at the end of your advert instead of your email address if you have "masked" your address to avoid getting spam responses. People responding to your ad click on the "Email me" link and send you a message via our form. When you get this message in your email account, just click reply (make sure you don't create a new mail going to adresponse@dailyinfo.co.uk). Thereafter you can email each other in the normal way.

In order to use this facility, click the "Mask email" button while submitting your ad. A new screen will appear, on which you should type your email address carefully into the small yellow box, remove your address from your main text in the big white box (if it's in there), and then click the "Mask my email" button. You will then be returned to the normal ad submission process.

If you are the sort of person who uses auto-replies (e.g. "I will be out of the office until 25th June and will reply to your application then"), it's worth noting that your respondents won't get any auto-replies your may have set up in your email account. Unless your computer is very clever, any auto-replies will come through to Daily Info office mailbox. So if you are going away, it's a good idea to use an email address in your ad that doesn't have any auto-replies set up on it.

If you use a masked email address, you can also log in and check your responses online. More info on that below.

In case you're wondering, your email address still counts as only one word, despite "Email me" being two.

Except for Houses and Flats for Sale, you don't need an account to do anything on Daily Info. It can be useful, however. It's free, and we don't harvest any data from your details. Here are some of the things you can do:

• If you've placed an advert with a masked email it is possible to check your responses by logging in to our site, as well as by checking your email in the normal way. This can be useful if, for example, your emails go to your home computer and you want to check responses while you're out or away. Whether you log in to our site or not, the responses will still be sent to you by email as usual.

• If your incoming mailserver has very high anti-spam settings, it may reject the responses to your masked email, and, again, logging in to Daily Info means that you won't miss any replies.

• You can take your ad(s) offline - and put them back online - instantly, without having to contact us (although you can still do it the old-fashioned way if you prefer).

• If you are responding to someone's advert via a masked email ("Email Me"), you can, if you wish, send yourself a copy of your message at the same time.

• You can look at your previous adverts (and their responses), in case you want to re-use similar text or get back in touch with someone.

• If you fill in details such as your address, you can then use those details when you're placing paid ads while logged in, which speeds up the process considerably. You don't have to fill in these details, and we do not and will not pass them on to anyone else, or contact you at all, actually, unless there's a problem with your ad.

• You can use several different email addresses but manage all your ad responses using the same log in details.

• If you mark spam emails as evil, you can alert our system to scammers targeting the site. This will cut down further on any bad emails that currently manage to get through our spam filter, to you and others. A small action, but satisfying.

So how do I get an account? You can create an account right now, or wait till the next time you want to place an ad.

When you place an ad you are sent an email confirmation (if you don't get this email it means not only will you not be able to log in, but your responses won't get through to your email address either. This will usually be due to a typo in your email address - do get in touch and we'll fix it for you).

This email contains a password for a new account. Your username will be the email address you used in the advert (you can change your username and password to something memorable once you've logged in). In the same email will be a link which you will need to click to activate the account.

All subsequent ads placed with the same masked email address will automatically appear in your account. You can also add more email addresses to your username. Just place your ad with the new email address (again masked) and the confirmation email will contain a link you can click to do this. You will then arrive at the same login page. Use your established details (not the new address and password) to log in, and the ad, and address, will be automatically added to the established account.

There is a link to the login page on the bottom left of our homepage. You can tell if you're logged in because you will see an extra tab at the far right of the menus across the top of the page as you move around the site, called My Daily Info, which will take you back to your account pages if you click on it. It looks like this.

Paid ads appear in small type in the free section until we have processed payment. This will normally be within an hour or so during business hours. They will then appear in the paid section (larger type, at the top of the webpage), and in your selected issue(s) of the printed sheet. If they don't, email us or call us on 01865 241133, quoting your reference code if possible.

If your free ad has disappeared from the website, it may well be because we've moved it to a different section - for example, if we find an ad from someone looking for a job in our Jobs Offered section, we will probably move it to our Jobs Wanted section. If we're feeling particularly harrassed that day, we might delete it altogether.

Ads in Men Seeking Women, Women Seeking Men and Gay, Lesbian and Bi will not appear until you have activated them by clicking on a link in an email that is sent to you when you place the ad.

We may delete or decline to publish ads, for a number of reasons. The most common of these are:

1. If your ad contains no contact details. If you realise you've missed your contact details out, please contact us and get us to alter your ad, rather than placing a succession of further ads yourself.

2. If your ad is illiterate, illegal, offensive or nonsensical. See our Terms and Conditions for more details.

3. If we feel you are abusing the site in some way - e.g. entering your ad ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS, OR runningWords,together-to-try,toFit,more-in, OR spamming our pages with many copies of the same ad, OR using more than one ad to advertise the same object. If you want more than 10 words' worth of information in your ad, we think you should pay for it.

4. If your ad is in a foreign language. While we have a smattering of French, German, Spanish and even Arabic, we currently have no full-time staff fluent in Polish, Chinese, Russian or, in fact, most other languages. If we can't understand your ad, we'll delete it. If you have a good reason for wanting to advertise in a language other than English, please contact us, and we'll be happy to place your ad for you with a translation alongside.

5. If we feel that you are not being entirely straightforward or if we've received complaints about you from people who've responded to your advert.

6. If you are a professional organisation placing free ads for which we feel you should pay. We're very cheap and focus far more on providing a good service than we do on squeezing cash out of people, but we do have to make enough money to keep going.

If you're a registered charity, you may not have to pay VAT on your advertising. We will need a letter from you confirming this. If you're not sure whether you're exempt or not, please click here for HMRC's guidelines on eligibility and claiming relief. If you are eligible, please fill out the standard declaration (section 10) and send it to us by post. Without a valid declaration, we will not be able to charge your advert without VAT, even if we have your charity number.

Daily Information is delivered regularly (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 5pm, during University term, Thursdays only during the vacations) by messenger to around 450 sites around Oxford (have a look at the current display points here).

We can arrange to deliver your posters or fliers (any size) together with the DI sheet to any or all of these locations. The drops are divided into eight different routes across Oxford. We accept 40 posters per route (320 for all routes). All you have to do is decide which routes you want to cover, contact us to book a time, and provide us with the posters by 12pm on the day of delivery.

Cost: £5 per route + VAT. All 8 routes = £47 (incl. VAT) Payment can be made on the day, or upon receipt of invoice by cash, cheque or credit card.

Please note that we cannot guarantee display of a poster at any particular site - this service is dependent upon the goodwill of our displayers.

We don't have a fax machine - sorry!

Our opening hours are 9am - 6pm, Monday - Friday.